For many years now, Finland has been known as one of the most prosperous countries, while its educational system created a worldwide interest after Finland's students started scoring high on PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) rankings.
In the diploma thesis, we examined Slovenian and Finnish institutional early childhood education. We were interested in whether there are statistically significant differences between both educational systems in public kindergartens and how these are manifested in the work of educators.
By using descriptive and comparative methods of document analysis and comparison, we analysed the Slovenian and Finnish early childhood curricula.
As part of quantitative research including 305 Slovenian and 164 Finnish early childhood educators, we used a questionnaire to identify similarities and differences between the Slovenian and Finnish early childhood education systems, regarding the field of the study programme, working conditions, educators' preparation for work and use of the curriculum, self-evaluations and educators’ level of satisfaction and performance at work. We found statistically significant differences between Slovenian and Finnish early childhood education study programmes. There are some statistically significant differences between educators employed in public kindergartens in Slovenia and Finland in working conditions, preparation for work, use of the curriculum, and assessments of satisfaction and performance at work. We did not find any statistically significant differences in the self-evaluation of educational work between Slovenian and Finnish educators.
We observed differences between Slovenian and Finnish educators in their assessment of self-competence for work after completing education as well as in the attitudes of educators from both countries towards the currently valid curriculum for early childhood education, but there were no significant differences between them in the frequency of self-evaluation processes. In the final part, based on the answers obtained, we formulated and presented some proposals for possible improvement of the Slovenian early childhood education system in public kindergartens.
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